More than the Heart Muscle

I was in a yoga class the other day where we were focusing on heart-opening poses. This can be challenging for me – sometimes even a simple upward dog (urdha mukha svanasana) can be very frustrating as I constantly think about depressing my scapula, while adducting my shoulders and extending my neck etc. etc. The heart-opening upward dog actually requires a lot of muscles to be moving together in order for one to truly ‘open the heart’ which don’t actually involve the heart muscle itself.